Bernie Sanders Won Last Night’s Democratic Debate

Bernie Sanders makes a point to Anderson Cooper during last night’s debate

W.J. Astore

Last night, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton separately took questions from a “town hall” in Derry, New Hampshire with Anderson Cooper moderating. Overall, both candidates did well, though I give the edge to Sanders (more on why in a moment).

Sanders came across as passionate on the issues and concerned for ordinary Americans. He continues to speak of a political revolution, which to him doesn’t mean tumbrels to the guillotine. It means getting more people involved in the political process, especially youth and the disadvantaged. He spoke eloquently of helping others. Memorable to me was his work to desegregate housing owned by the University of Chicago when Sanders was a student. When asked why he fought against racist policies, Sanders said he’s always hated a bully – and always fought for fairness and equality. He came across, in short, as an honest and decent man, a man of integrity, which is the word his wife used to describe him (she was sitting in the audience, and was asked to describe her husband with a single word).

Hillary came across as determined and competent and informed. She tended to meander during her answers, coming across as somewhat of a policy wonk or a technocrat. She rejected Sanders’ talk of a revolution, preferring to build on President Obama’s (and her own) legacy. For example, she wants to put the finishing touches to Obamacare, rather than going for Sanders’ idea of a single-payer, “Medicare for all” system. She spoke briefly of breaking the ultimate glass ceiling for women – her gaining the office of the presidency – and how that would inspire women of all ages. She took her usual hardline on U.S. foreign policy, making no promises that she would reduce wars or for that matter spending on defense.

In sum, if you’re happy with the status quo, you’ll get plenty of that with Clinton. If you want change, if you’re tired of a “rigged” economy and a corrupt political process, Sanders is far more likely to act in your favor.

Where I thought Hillary fell down was in her posturing as a progressive. The millions of dollars she has accepted in speaking fees from banks and investment houses, she suggested, would have no impact on her policy decisions, which is simply implausible. Powerful organizations don’t give political candidates big money without strings attached to it, and of course Clinton knows this. It also seemed implausible when Clinton suggested she had not decided to run for president when she accepted those speaking fees. As if her “doubts” about running absolved her of responsibility for taking big money from Wall Street. It was all frankly unconvincing.

Hillary Clinton is a fighter. She came across best when she spoke of the Republican right-wing attacks she’d had to endure over the last 25 years, and what they’d taught her about the political process. Her footing was less secure when she had to relate to other people. For example, a man suffering from advanced-stage cancer asked her about dying with dignity. Bill Clinton, the “natural” as Hillary called him, would have turned this into an empathetic “I feel your pain” moment. But Hillary got lost in the details, saying she would have to study up on the ethics of terminal care, the laws, the role of medical professionals, what other countries are doing (she mentioned The Netherlands), and so on. As she tackled the problem in a wonkish way, she seemed to forget the person standing in front her.

In sum, Bernie Sanders is driving the narrative, not Hillary Clinton. It’s Bernie who’s been talking about a rigged system, about economic fairness, about working for unions, about justice and prison reform, and it’s Hillary who’s been put on the defensive. So lately Hillary’s been borrowing liberally from Bernie’s script. She’s now talking about “the deck being stacked” against ordinary people, and how she’s going to fight for workers, and how much Wall Street is supposedly against her candidacy.

As Bernie has gained in the polls, as his message has begun to resonate, Hillary has responded by trying to be more like Bernie. And it just doesn’t ring true, at least for me. Advantage, Bernie.

19 thoughts on “Bernie Sanders Won Last Night’s Democratic Debate”

I wonder how soon Goldman-Sachs (“Gold Sacks”) will arrange another juicy honorarium for Madame Clinton to deliver a speech displaying her policy wonkishness. You know, just to prove how much Wall Street opposes her!

I covered this You-Know-Her thing in verse a long time ago. But still, undaunted by a lifetime of incompetence and irrelevancy, she has come back for yet another climb up the greasy pole, as if no one remembers all the reasons why no one in their right mind — at least for those calling themselves “progressives” (the term itself a craven eupemism for “liberal”) — would want her anywhere near the levers of power in the declining empire. So, please, let us never forget why history has revealed her as …

A Useless Ewe
(From The Triumph of Strife: an homage to Dante Alighieri and Percy Shelley)

How did the Nazi Germans get like that?
Why did the Japanese do such fell deeds?
How did America grow dumb and fat?

Mike, I have to take exception to your terminology here. Bearing in mind the relativistic nature of US politics in this looney-tunes environment–e.g. Gov. Kasich was a “moderate” among the GOP presidential wannabes…I guess!–though he has big shortcomings in some areas of his platform, I think we may still distinguish Bernie as a progressive whereas Madame You-Know-Her is the Liberal. As Phil Ochs said 50 years ago, introducing his song “Love Me, I’m A Liberal”: [his definition thereof] “Ten degrees to the left of center when times are good, Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.” I peg HRC far more than ten degrees to the right at this time and definitely apply the term craven to her political career.

I appreciate your article on HuffPost today re: Sanders and Clinton at the Town hall meeting last night. Even though I was paying very close attention to their comments, you show some greater insights into the candidates’ thought processes that I will have to think about. My husband was in the AF during the Vietnam War, and I appreciate your comments regarding the issues coming from someone who has “been there”( ie. foreign policy, progressiveness, political change). I am for Sanders because I believe he is consistent and to the point. He doesn’t ramble. Hillary was better than usual last night, but there still seemed to be a lot of rambling. I think she would end up just being “Clinton-part 2”.
Thanks again for your communications.
Tracy Thomas-Miller

My sense is she’s triangulating, looking for a new path ahead that steals some of Sanders’ thunder while suggesting he’s simply too “dangerous” or idealistic to win in November.

In this, she’s no worse than most politicians. They want to win and will change their views to suit the season. But the electorate seems to want a person who’s not a typical politician, hence the support for Trump, who may be crazy but at least he’s not “typical.”

You-Know-Her did not expect a serious challenge to her inevitable coronation in 2008, either. Then this virtually unknown black guy showed up, elbowed her aside, and she wound up working for him as his Secretary of State for four years. On the job as usual, I put together a little report in verse about this utterly unaaccomplished mediocrity.

It Takes a Pillage

Another trip by You-Know-Her,
Like Dubya’s Karen Hughes,
Abroad to sell Israeli sand
In desert interviews
To monarchs of “democracy”
Who find her rants old news.

She thought that voting for a “war”
That Dick and Dubya sold her
Would make her look all-tough-and-stuff
But only served to mold her
Into a shrieking, shallow shill
For Zionists who told her

What she would say: when, where, and why,
No matter the occasion.
Her bullshit bile: “Let Muslims die!”
Or, “Let’s have an invasion!”
While ducking every question with
A doublespeak evasion

Has left no further room for doubt
That travesty and terror
Have triumphed in the U.S.A.,
Where crass conceit and error
Combine to export gifts from Greeks,
With You-Know-Her the bearer.

Just saw on NBC Evening News (Feb. 4) You-Know-Her cracking a “hilarious” joke about her speech fees from Wall Street. Why did she take $675,000 (thus far)? “Because that’s what they offered.” Oh hardy-har-har-har-harrrr, as Ralph Kramden (now THERE was a Great American!) would have said.

You have an “old” poem ready for almost every occasion, Mike, which is sad when you think about it — sad because so little has changed in the thrust and dynamic of U.S. politics and foreign policy since 9/11 (or, you might say, since Vietnam?).

Bernie is the better candidate, by far, but he will not become president because the system is rigged against him. Fact is, the USA has never been a democracy. It has always been a plutocratic oligarchy and the plutocrats will not allow Bernie to win. They will take him down if he becomes a threat to their dominance. The plutocrats are in charge. As FDR said, “Presidents are selected, not elected.”

I find it difficult to find one new thing to say in verse about You-Know-Her, who acts and sounds just as lame, venal, and opportunistic today as she ever did. Still, You-Know-Her did reveal another glimpse of the amoral monster within her upon hearing of the homosexual rape/murder of Libya’s leader, Moammar Gaddafi, which resulted from her own “humanitarian” policies and those of her buffaloed boss, Barack Obama. Hence, to the background tune of insane, gleeful cackling, we have:

“We came. We saw. He died,” she cackled,
This chicken hen hawking her bile,
Amused at the bleeding and shackled
Gaddafi upon whom would pile
Jihadists with red hatred spackled,
And all so Dame Clinton could smile.

Or, alternatively:

On hearing of Gaddafi’s savage murder
She smiled and joked: “We came. We saw. He died.”
Apparently, she thought that those who heard her
Would share her chickenhenish war-slut pride.

She campaigned in her youth for Bomber Barry
Goldwater, who from Arizona came;
Who made his money ripping off the natives
On reservations where he staked his claim.

Our You-Know-Her worked hard for Bomber Barry
Who swore that if elected he would kill
Vietnamese who found us less than scary
In numbers that would break their iron will.

A pantsuit with no principles or vision
Just raw ambition: naked, stark, and vain.
If peace might happen, war is her decision.
Goldwater’s Girl is just a John McCain.

Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2015

Come to think of it, given the virtual orgasm that You-Know-Her experienced on You Tube when learning of Gaddafi’s savage murder, she might more accurately have summarized Caesar’s latin motto as follows:

I have not watched any of the Democratic Party debates this time around because I have already seen and heard — too many times to count — everything that You-Know-Her will show and tell to get a job she has always desired but for which she has shown no aptitude or ability whatsoever. So, from the bottomless archives of Here We Go Again With You-Know-Her, I offer another of my (endlessly recurring) takes on:

An Ersatz Commander in Knickers

Before a mirror now she stands
Saluting with her two right hands
“Commanding” like some jaded Joan of Arc
A warfare welfare mother slick
Another monkey on a stick
She gladly held the match that lit the spark

She clearly failed to look and see
The dwarf dyslexic chimpanzee
Who made baboons of her and Bubba Bill
Attacking those upon the left
Who saw through Dubya’s lack of heft
She now sounds less a leader than a shill

In thrall to medals on the chest
Not nearly brightest nor the best
She signed off on a jingoistic jaunt
No judgment did she bring to bear
Emitting only heated air
Her bad decisions have returned to haunt

And now with knickers in a bunch
She lives to rue the fateful hunch
She followed on her first blind date with war
It seemed like such a little thing:
A rapt submission to a fling
That’s left her used again like Dubya’s whore

Yet unrepentant at the ease
With which war caused her brain to freeze
Our You-Know-Her wants us to make her queen
She’s got this urge to have a go,
She’d like us all to truly know,
In spite of all that we have heard and seen

She now says she would like to fight
And not just pander to the right
She says the middle finger them she’ll give
But calculating cons and pros
She tallies up the “yea”s and “no”s
And then displays a pinky as her shiv

It simply doesn’t seem to work
This “centrist” mush served by a jerk
Who likes the times that buy men’s souls just fine
For having sold her own soul cheap
She now can utter not a peep
When voters choose someone more genuine

With a tip of the hat to Republican millionaire Ross Perot, who twice split the Republican Party ticket, handing the U.S. presidency to Bubba Bill Clinton (and You-Know-Her, to hear her tell it), I offer from eleven years ago an observation and a warning. Just consider what pusillanimous, Clintonian ambivalence: i.e., “triangulation,” has cost the Democratic Party, America, and the World:

Maybe or Maybe Not
(after the style of Rudyard Kipling’s “If”)

If you would lose your head when others wouldn’t
And let polls do your thinking when you won’t,
If you could trust George Bush when wise men couldn’t
But still excuse his lying when they don’t,

If you can wait for someone else to lead us,
And being led yourself, follow behind,
And, living large, dine with the ones who bleed us,
Yet never seem to pay us any mind;

If you’re content to make George Bush your master,
If you can slink away to his estate;
If you can turn Triumph into Disaster
And treat Joe Lieberman as your blind date;

If you can bear to hear the lies you’ve spoken
Straightened by truth to make you look the fool,
Or watch what former Democrats built broken,
While right-wing cynics use you as their tool;

If you can make one heap of all our army
And risk their lives on one throw of the dice,
And lose, and cover up by speaking smarmy
And blame somebody else by talking nice;

If you can show no heart or nerve or sinew
Yet serve your own self even as you flee,
And so put out when there is nothing in you
Except the sign you wear which says: “Kick me!”

It could be that someone will come to teach you
Some braver soul, perhaps, will show the way
Maybe an errant vertebra will reach you
Perhaps your spine will stiffen one fine day

You may, perhaps, or maybe you won’t, either
Perhaps you’ll skitter further to the right
Like other chicken hawks, you need a breather
Before the next time that you take to flight

With luck, we won’t lose more than three each day now
Perhaps only a dozen died this week
It could be you’ve found some cool way to say, “Wow!
Just look at all that `Victory’ we seek!”

You could have chanced to find some Chinese money
To borrow from our children for your war
Maybe you’ll visit good King George, your honey,
And pledge your party as his loyal whore

You and the press have sure played Rip Van Winkle
And gone to sleep to wake up out to lunch
While vampires on our “values” loudly sprinkle
Invective while continuing to munch

Yet still you quake and quiver at the vision
Of greedy bats out after our last dime
Upon our necks they make a new incision
While you prevaricate and stall for time

While Cindy Sheehan shows true grit you wobble
And, like the wildebeest, hide in the herd
Content to let the lion chew and gobble
On others’ children – all without a word

Perhaps you’ll dodge a vote and so we’ll stay in
Most likely you’ll decry some burning flags
While soldiers die you slither on your way in
To Senate chambers famed for bogus gags

No doubt you’ll raise more funds to sell your virtue,
And kneel for kings to lose the common touch,
While only friends but not your foes desert you;
Because you’ve asked too little for so much,

You’ll likely fill the unforgiving hour
With only sixty seconds’ worth of work,
And still expect the Earth for you to flower,
Which maybe will not happen now, you jerk!

As for my aging archives of “old” poetry — since I see nothing new to write about the same motherless cretins who continue to infest the U.S. government decade after decade — I thought I should give Bernie Sanders at least an indirect passing mention since the “Anybody Left of You-Know-Her” contingent has nowhere else to turn other than Jill Stein of the Green Party who has by far the best economic and anti-militarist platform of any candidate currently seeking the job of POTUS. Anyway, in view of this article’s topic: namely, the so-called “debate” between Senator Sanders and the bloody-minded You-Know-Her, I thought of a few “new” verses exploiting — if not exploding — the usual ornithological metaphors appropriate to America’s long-since discredited official endless-war group-think. I haven’t even published these lines on my own website yet. So, you read it here first, fellow Crimestoppers. Something “new” for Professor Astore:

A Fine Feathered Fiend

The Chicken Hen glowers and clucks for a fight
“Buk buk buk buk buk buk buk buk!”
Secure in her arrogance that she is right:
A “hawk” who still quacks like a duck.

Consulting the mirror that hangs on her wall
She asked of herself what she knew:
“Don’t I have same right to just kill them all,
Like Bill, George, and Barack? I do!”

“Just show me those peasants who care what I’ve said
Or done or what costs have accrued
From decades in which I helped add to the dead.
So what if they know? They’re still screwed.”

“I’ve lots of ‘experience.’ This I will flaunt.
I’ll claim that in losing, I’ve won.
And if ‘it’ means what the Republicans want,
Then damn right, I’ll see it gets done.”

“Now tell me the future, and put it in quotes.
Show me what I have paid much to see;
Not the bald Jewish guy winning all of those votes
Who’ve seen nothing they want less than me.”

Thus glaring and clucking and pecking, this “hawk”
Threatens mayhem and death to all those
Who see in her scratching and hear in her squawk
Just a hen in her worst rooster pose.

I, too, have not bothered to view the Democrat “debates” but a headline on CNN’s website (so it must be accurate, right?) indicated Bernie has vowed to obliterate “ISIS.” Doesn’t quite sound like a peace candidate. Of course, to fail to make such utterances would open the door to GOP (whom I’m sure wouldn’t otherwise attack him…Whew, these are the most hilarious parenthetical remarks I’ve made in a long time!) to paint him as a weak-kneed Liberal pansy capitulationist. Nor can we expect Bernie to speak in favor of human rights for Palestinians. “Revolution,” Bernie?!? Shall we argue that “single payer healthcare for all” is a revolutionary concept in contemporary America? Or should we recognize the US would simply be playing catch-up with the civilized world??? And a much overdue game of catch-up, at that.

Glad I didn’t watch the show, Greg. From what I hear, You-Know-Her openly boasted about her infatuation — mutual, as she tells it — with mass murderer Henry Kissinger, who once complained incredulously about the stubbornly independent Vietnamese: “I refuse to believe that a little fourth rate power doesn’t have a breaking point.” So millions died in Southeast Asia just so Henry could see if they would break! What a monster. And You-Know-Her wanst to use him as a character reference! Again, glad I didn’t watch or I would have thrown something at my television monitor while simultaneously vomiting in disgust. What a nation of credulous, amoral fools to even consider such a war-slut for their president. Jill Stein has my vote, since as you say, Bernie Sanders would probably kill as many muslims for the Apartheid Zionist Entity as she would. Possibly something of an edge to Sanders on domestic economic issues, but not much else separates them.